If You Don’t Know You’re Unhappy are You?

It seems a paradox to say that a person could be unhappy, even though they didn't think that they were unhappy. Surely happiness is a feeling which you know you have, if you have it, and know you don't have if you don't have it.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle would not agree with what I have just said. He had a conception of 'happiness' as more than simply a subjective feeling but rather a judgment that we make about the quality of a person's life. A man who is being cheated on by his wife is not 'happy' according to Aristotle's definition, even if he is blissfully unaware of the fact and thinks that he is the happiest man in the world.

You might reply that Aristotle is not talking about 'happiness' per se, but something else. The substantial question is what sort of happiness we should want.

There is another dimension to the problem, however. Since Freud, we have got used to the idea that we are not always aware of how we truly feel. You assert you are happy, and as you utter the words you seem to believe what you say. Yet deep inside there is a gnawing unhappiness which is causing you to 'act out' in various ways, spoiling relationships and hurting people. Freud said that his objective was to transform a person's neuroses into 'generalized unhappiness'. It sometimes seems as if he thought that everyone ought to be 'unhappy'.